Wired Latinos

Blaire Borthayre, CEO of Hispanic Marketing Resources (HMR), wants marketers to learn the necessary skills to reach and serve the immigrant Hispanic community. These skills can be learned in the form of online seminars, aka webinars, offered on demand through the HMR website.

HMR has been helping businesses reach the Latino consumer through culturally appropriate behaviors and messaging training since 2000. However, the recent economic downturn forced HMR to reassess and innovate and they started offering webinars online as a way to offer a more affordable way for marketers to reach the growing Latino market.

"During tough economic times, training and travel are the first to be cut in the budgets of most companies. Webinars are an affordable convenient way for them to learn and/or reach a certain segment of the market without having to pay exorbitant travel or marketing costs," says Ms. Borthayre.

In a time of online sophistication, webinars are another tool to help many different industry specific groups reach the Hispanic market by overcoming language and cultural barriers. Among HMR's wide library of webinars we found webinars for Attorneys, Bankers, Retail, Physicians and now Dentists.

"For example, there is an misconception that immigrants avoid going to dentists simply because they can't afford to do so and this is just not true," explains Borthayre. The truth is that "[there] is a dire need for marketers who can overcome cultural and language barriers to help our community."

It is a known fact that once cultural and language barriers are overcome, Hispanics are loyal consumers who will refer many family and friends to their favorite product or service and that is the message HMR is driving with all their webinar products.

Each webinar is 90 minutes long and just needs a computer with speakers and a phone line or internet service to access. There is also the choice of downloading a copy of the recorded webinar instantly.

Jenni River and mun2.com have partnered to take reality television to a whole new level with a new show, "Jenni Rivera Presents Chiquis and Raq-C" which will premier Saturday, July 3rd.

The show will focus on the daughter of music icon, Jenni Rivera. From managing her mother's music empire to balancing love, family and friends, this sexy young lady has got it under control. It's a non-stop Hollywood lifestyle for Janney "Chiquis" Rivera and her larger-than-life BFF and popular LA radio DJ, Raquel "Raq-C" Cordova. This will be their Hollywood reality which they will be sharing with mun2 followers.

The one-hour, reality series exclusive, "Jenni Rivera Presents Chiquis and Raq-C" will reveal the side of Jenni Rivera we've never seen. As Jenni Rivera's business empire continues to expand - from a ground-breaking music career to a thriving clothing and fragrance line – so do Chiquis' responsibilities.

You can catch full episodes and exclusive clips from the 13 episode series on www.holamun2.com/rivera where viewers will also get a chance to read some of the text messages that the characters are sending to each other on-screen. Viewers will also have the opportunity to interact with characters from the show holamun2.com/rivera.

AARP commissioned a national telephone survey of the 50+ population, including an oversample of Hispanic adults age 50 and older, to gather information on this age group's use of social media and technology and thereby better serve all Americans age 50+ through its website.

Key findings revealed:

• Two out of five (40%) adults age 50 and over consider themselves extremely (17%) or very (23%) comfortable using the Internet. One out of five (21%) Hispanic adults age 50 and over consider themselves extremely (6%) or very (15%) comfortable using the Internet.
• The majority of those 50+ who access the Internet do so from a desktop computer (57%). One-quarter use a laptop (26%), 4 percent use smartphones/blackberries, 4 percent use mobile phones, and one-quarter (27%) do not access the Internet. The majority of Hispanic adults 50+ say they do not access the Internet (55%).
• Approximately one-quarter of all those 50+ use social media websites (27%) with Facebook being by far the most popular (23%). Approximately one-fifth of all Hispanics 50+ use social media websites (21%) with Facebook being the most popular (13%).

The survey was conducted via telephone by GfK Custom Research. Questions were included on GfK’s OmniTel and Hispanic OmniTel surveys during May 12-17, 2010. A nationally representative sample of 1,360 adults age 50 and older, as well as 503 Hispanic adults age 50 and older, completed the interviews.

Read full report here.

Source: AARP

Quepasa.com, an online social network targeting the Latino community, has signed an agreement with Titan Gaming to integrate Titan's skill-based gaming technologies into Quepasa's Open Social Developer platform. This partnership will facilitate the availability and publishing of skill-based social games to Quepasa's registered user base of over 14 million Latinos. The partnership will drive the engagement and monetization of Quepasa's users and will continue to differentiate Quepasa's core offering.

"Game developers around the world are looking for better ways to monetize their games beyond ads and virtual currency. Titan's Platform enables game developers to add tournaments, leaderboards, skill-based matchmaking, and points and cash competitions (dependent upon the laws in each jurisdiction) to their portfolios of games," said John Maffei, CEO of Titan Gaming. "We are excited to partner with Quepasa due to their explosive user growth, comprehensive gaming strategy, and their singular focus on the rapidly-growing and sophisticated Latino user base."

"Quepasa is excited to partner with Titan Gaming, as we believe the availability of skill-based gaming titles will be a real differentiator for Quepasa as we start to market our Open Social Developer platform to the broader game developer community. We look forward to working with social game developers from across the globe to effectively drive the adoption and monetization of their titles to our rapidly growing Latino user base," said Quepasa CEO, John Abbott.

Source: MarketWatch